WLVAC

The History Of

In the beginning.

Wantagh-Levittown Volunteer Ambulance Corps was founded in 1956 by Homer Moore, a local plumber and firefighter. Homer recognized the community’s need for an immediate medical response. Initially, Homer set out to create a private ambulance, however he decided that a volunteer ambulance corps was just what the community needed.

Our first buildings.

With an idea coming to life, Homer created our ambulance corps utilizing a small shack seated on the MacArthur football field next to the Wantagh fire station. Shortly after, we needed to find another home. WLVAC was moved to Hunt Road into a small house on Levittown’s school district property. The house came with a two car garage, which housed our first ambulances, a 1951 Cadillac and a 1947 Buick. Yet again, we had to find another new and permanent home.

Our current building.

Thus, the Wantagh-Levittown Volunteer Ambulance Corps found its new home at 129 Balsam Lane. The building was constructed by the dedication, spirit, and hands of the volunteers and community in recognition for the great service our ambulance corps would and will continue to provide to our surrounding communities.

How we got 9-1-1.

Now settled into our permanent home, we sought for a way to accept calls from the community for medical attention. Our first dispatcher was a single person always at headquarters answering the phones. After he died, we tried using several phone lines dispatched by the wives of the men who volunteered here. Later on, we implemented a red phone system. This system gave each dispatcher and officer of the corps a red phone to answer in their own homes while on duty. At this time, our ambulances were primarily providing the community with transportation to hospitals and back home.

In 1981, the ambulance corps gained access to the Fire Communications dispatching service, commonly referred to as “Fire Comm”. This was an agreement with the County Executive, The Fire Marshal’s Office, and Nassau County Police Department’s Emergency Ambulance Bureau. The agreement was, that if we wanted to use Fire Comm as our dispatcher, we needed to be in the 9-1-1 system. In order to do that, we had to send members to become Advanced Medical Technicians. So 5 members became AMTs right away. Now with Fire Comm as our dispatcher, we obtained the ability to respond to 9-1-1 emergency calls. WLVAC began providing Advanced Life Support through the 9-1-1 emergency response system with the ability to treat critical and medical emergencies.